There are reasons why bitcoin isn't picking up by local people in Singapore. Your currency has been relatively stable and your economic isn't build on Ponzi scheme like the US or Europe.

When people are not worry about their saving, why bother seeking alternative currency.


With that being said, there is no reason why Singapore can't be another major hub for bitcoin trading in Asia.

The owner running the exchange here can do the following to attract volume:
1) Open a foreign currency account with your local bank and let customer deposit money in currency other than Singapore dollar. You can pass the incoming and outgoing fee to customer.
2) Let people trade in currency other than Singapore dollar (ie, Euro, pound, USD, Aussy).
3) Reduce the transaction fee to attract Market Maker, trader, and people doing arbitrage. I can assure you if the wire fee and transaction fee are low enough, you can attract all kind of people to your exchange from all over the world.
4) Have adequate support staff. The support team doesn't even have to be good. Just competent enough to beat the one at Mtgox (I can assure you this isn't even hard to beat seeing many of their angry customers (I am one among them) have their money stucked for over 1 month)
5) The bid and ask trade engine has to be reasonable. Bitstamp and Mtgox have pretty lame matching algorithm yet they still manage to become the major exchanges. Finding a competent programmer to write a better bid-ask engine and matching algorithm shouldn't be too hard.


Enough of ranting. Peace